'Better get hit in yo' soul'

There was the naked homeless man, the meandering woman, the creepy hobo, the guy who snuck in at night to play the organ -- and almost certainly others who have since been forgotten. Each supposedly wandered into the Music Building once upon a time, and in some case, repeatedly.

It is true the Music Building sometimes draws in members of Seattle's penniless, who visit the building perhaps more than any other on campus. While the reasons for such visits may be puzzling, just stroll past the building late at night and you will realize why they come, and why they return. Listen for a moment as a stream of jumbled harmonies, both vocal and instrumental, drift into darkness. The notes may cling to your ear long enough to draw you in. And should you step inside, you may also learn why -- unlike so many other buildings on campus -- this one is not named after a prominent professor or president but is known simply as the Music Building.

Inside, music matters most.

Within the Music Building, there is little to look at, nothing to steal your attention from the sounds echoing throughout the 52-year-old structure -- except for maybe the vibrant wainscoting wrapping around the hallway walls, each of which was painted a different color last week. There is fairway green on the ground floor, sea-foam blue on the first floor, Easter-egg lavender on the second and a school-spirited coat of Husky purple stripping the lower half of the third.

The music students don't really know why the halls were repainted.

"I think somebody just got a color wheel and decided to go from one end to the other," said Mike Cabe, a senior majoring in jazz studies.

But they do not mind that the UW's staple color, what Cabe calls "U-Dub white-gray," was washed away amid a sea of paint. "It was so drab in here before," Cabe recalled. "It looked like you were in a battleship, so I think someone decided they were going to add some spice."

Once the painting began, there were even wagers made as to what color would follow the previous. "They started on the third and started working their way down, and we kept placing bets on what the next color was going to be," said Dyne Eifertsen, a graduate student and TA for jazz history.

If not for the unexplained bands of color, which seem strangely out of place in a building festooned with monochromatic uniformity -- rows of battered lockers, closed doors and cluttered bulletin boards -- there would be nothing but the music itself to liven the building. The music -- all kinds at all times -- is everywhere, permeating the building's aged walls and spilling into the outside world. Roam the third-floor halls, among the student practice rooms and, no matter the time of day, you may hear a tenor singing in Italian, belting out a melodic story you've never heard in a language you don't even understand. Not that you'd care, because you may have already become absorbed by the trumpet a few doors down, or the oboe to the left, or perhaps you wandered downstairs to the ground level, hearing someone playing piano down the hall -- room 14.

Room 14 is the office of Marc Seales, an associate professor of jazz piano, but knock on his door late at night and you may find that from 9:30 to about 11 the room belongs to Cabe. There he sits, on a leather bench, hunched over a black Steinway & Sons grand piano older than he, his fingers in a frantic rush to cover the keys, his foot lightly pressing the pedals. And the result is the reason why people like the naked homeless man choose to mosey into the Music Building over others on campus.

They come for the music.

Still, don't expect to walk in on a concerto -- not every night, anyway. Most nights, unfinished pieces, scales and chord progressions are all that can be heard, as most students are there to sharpen their skills, not to entertain passersby. Cabe, for example, begins his practice by warming up for about 25 minutes, submitting each hand to a tedious 10 minutes of chord progressions, and finishes with five minutes of scales.

And then he plays.

Cabe is a jazz pianist, so he gets his classical piano practice "out of the way" during the day, along with his classes and ensemble rehearsals. But the nighttime yields to his preferences.

At night, Cabe performs to a cramped, empty room. No audience, just himself and his craft. He mostly sticks to jazz -- he'll take Ellington over Mozart any day -- and sometimes performs pieces of his own creation, such as "AMG," a piece, he admits with a grin, that he wrote for "a particular girl."

Next to Cabe sits a second, older piano. It looks about the same as his, except for the streaks of bare wood, exposing the instrument's maturity, and the stained ivory keys which, Cabe is quick to point out, have lost some of their bounce. "I wonder if they built the school around that thing," he said of the piano. Surrounding Cabe is a wealth of disorder -- walls enveloped in past concert posters, pictures, calendars, news clippings, sheet music. In one corner there is a desk, atop which sits a computer and a lamp, islands among a sea of paper. Next to the desk is a Panasonic stereo, from which Cabe will sometimes listen to music or catch up on the Mariners, and a tower of shelves, topped with cardboard boxes and a brass-trimmed green chest. The shelves are overflowing with CDs, cassettes- and videotapes, books on everything from "great pianists" to "Africa since 1800," piles of paper and faceless binders.

This is Seales' office, but it is Cabe's after-hours playground, a place where Cabe can set to work with little distraction, save the occasional glance at an item within the room. Yet his attention rarely deviates from the half-ton tool at his fingertips, as little else inside room 14 matters. Even the ashtray-sized clock nestled high in the corner is habitually neglected.

However, unlike some students who practice at night "for hours at a time," Cabe is not immune to taking an occasional breather. He often receives visitors seeking refuge from their self-imposed isolation within a practice room three floors up -- or three floors down.

Jack Lightfoot, a sophomore drummer majoring in jazz studies, sometimes raps on the door, up from his underground lair that some have dubbed "Jack's place." Dyne Eifertsen, who practices in his trombone instructor's office on the third floor, also frequents room 14. He's been dropping by more often now, since Cabe has agreed to assist him in an upcoming recital. Eifertsen shows up around 9:45, trombone in hand.

Cabe and Eifertsen enjoy the camaraderie of practicing at night in the Music Building because, as Cabe said, "You kind of belong to this little sect of people. There's that kind of cool vibe where you stay a little bit later than everybody else, and you're still needed, you're still practicing."

The night owls of the music department are indeed a curious type. Some students occasionally play mini-concerts in the hallways or over the building's intercom, producing "live elevator music" until receiving inquisitive looks from the custodial staff. Others will sneak into a reception following a student's recital to shake hands with those in attendance. "You can get free food that way," Cabe explained. "That's always a cool music-student trick because no one knows who went to the recital, so you stop by the reception, shake hands. 'Hey, sounded great.' Grab some food. We've all done that once or twice."

Some students come more for the company -- or the food -- than for the practice; others come out of necessity. For many of the UW's 300-some music students, if they don't practice at night, they don't practice at all, as there are only about 30 practice rooms in the Music Building.

"During the day, the practice rooms are full," said freshman Barbara Larson, a saxophonist who often arrives shortly before 10 p.m., when the building is locked, to snag a third-floor practice room. "Unless it's right after class and you're one of the first people here, it's really hard to get a practice room. That's why I come at night."

But maybe the answer to why anyone would return to the Music Building, especially late at night, exists in one of room 14's subtleties. Last Wednesday, sitting atop the neglected piano -- the one Cabe never plays -- was a piece of sheet music by Charles Mingus, "Better get hit in your soul." As the title suggests, that is exactly why they return, to feel the music, to "get hit" in their souls.

"It is about emotion and thought and feeling and all this stuff coming together," Cabe said of his nocturnal realm, and why he chooses to return night after night. "I really don't want to leave school because I am attached to this piano and this room."